we were joking here at work if you had to make an American remake of Oldboy, who would be a more suitable or interesting choice for the lead. I said Paul Giamatti. I can imagine him with that high pitched voice cracking "you muthafucka!" while weilding a hammer

Pacific Rim was great. It's not just robots punching monsters. Well... the robots in it don't actually always do so well at that and every fight they're in has massive stakes and consequences. There's no love interest or hero's journey, but it's got an emotional core that makes you care about the characters.

Oh. And there's a dog. And a kid. And Godzooky. But they're actually all okay and the kid puts in an astonishing performance in the few scenes she's got.

It didn't just make me think of Gundam and Evangelion and Gojira, but Lovecraft and even The Kraken Wakes too. It could have been a sequel to Cloverfield and the future of Charlie Stross' Laundry books.

Which all means that it's not just a big summer popcorn movie. Although it's one of the very best of those. It's riding a weird zeitgeist wave that's breaking at the singularity of a lot of genre fiction of the past century or so.

The soundtrack's excellent too. There's a Tom Morello riff that goes through it, which pretty much means 'prepare for awesome' whenever it starts.

Go and see it this weekend, so they make more of this sort of thing, and it's not yet another great film like Dredd, that doesn't get the attention it deserves.

Very much enjoyed Pacific Rim. The plot hits pretty much every note you expect it to, but the action is stellar and the whole thing is beautiful. Idris Elba steals every scene he's in. It's also probably the most worthwhile use of IMAX that I've attended. As a bonus, I managed to snag a few of these lovely posters:

I just realized that one of the kaijus is killed in the exact same way a shark is in the Sharknado trailer.

PACIFIC RIM made me really happy, and showed that Del Toro really loved the source inspiration material enough to be bold and just toss everything that needed to be in there IN THERE. Quirky cast? Insane action? Bad Ass Girl? Funny mascots/pets? Rousing speeches? All there, along with a surprising heart to it all, and not gooed up with syrupy sentiment and gushy romance, but respect, connection and growth.

Yes, the monsters and robots were amazing, but I wanted to see what happened to the humans as well.

It's not quite quippy and rock-em sock-em as most jock audiences in the US will expect, but this one is a real winner in my book, and will get plenty of love in parts of the world where audiences haven't been pounded into stupidity with shit like TRANSFORMERS.

Right PAC-RIM! It was an incredible lot of fun. I was annoyed when they showed me the oil tanker in the trailer, because I got the sense they were giving up all the money shots before seeing the film, and I was more or less right. It was still exciting to see them on the BIG SCREEN, but Rocket Punch and stuff like that didn't have the HOLY SHIT!!! effect they would have had if they'd come as surprises.

I felt like whenever the Jaegers powered down, the movie lagged something serious. The character beats were really ham-fisted and I didn't feel like the Drift was used as much as it could. Instead, there was a lot of testosterone-spraying as the muscly, manly men were alternating between patronising, defending and insulting the ONLY major female character in the film. I don't want all films to be liberal, feminist films, but come on. Yes, she's capable, but on a CHARACTER level, she never really got the chance to shine in the way the others did. She ran around being really awkward and shy and deferential most of the time. She never quite got to grow up from the Frightened Little Girl, despite what any last minute pep talks try to shoehorn in. That having been said: Thank FUCK they went the way they did in the final moments and didn't do... that. You know what.

They spent a lot of time with the characters, but not enough time DEVELOPING them. Del Toro had a 400-page bible of info on the Kaiju, the Jaegers, the economic and political impacts of all this stuff, etc... And I can't help but feel like they could have put SOME of that effort into the characters as well.

So yeah. That was a bit "meh" but on the other hand: SO MUCH FUN!!! I did not start looking at my watch, which is usually something I instinctively start to do around 90 minutes into a film. It was funny, exciting and balls-out crazy in all the ways Transformers wasn't. so when are we going to get to play the Prequel Game? :D